


Fresh Sights

by Higuchimon



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Canon Het Relationship, Collect The Millennium Items, Diversity Writing Challenge, F/M, Gen, Pre-Canon, Word Count Set Boot Camp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:07:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27143594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Higuchimon/pseuds/Higuchimon
Summary: He has to get the images out of his head.  He's not sure how they even got in.  But if painting's the only way to get them out, then that's what he'll do.
Relationships: Cyndia Crawford | Cecelia Pegasus/Pegasus J. Crawford | Maximillion Pegasus
Kudos: 5





	Fresh Sights

**Title:** Fresh Sights  
 **Character:** Pegasus  
 **Chapter:** 1-1|| **Words:** 2,000  
 **Genre:** Drama|| **Rated:** G  
 **Challenges:** Diversity Writing, YGO DM/5Ds/VRAINS, E3, 1-shot with no dividers; Word Count Set Boot Camp, #17, 2,000; Collect The Millennium Items: Millennium Eye  
 **Notes:** This is set pre-canon, after Pegasus gets the Millennium Eye.  
 **Summary:** He has to get the images out of his head. He's not sure how they even got in. But if painting's the only way to get them out, then that's what he'll do.

* * *

Had he eaten recently? 

He didn’t remember. 

Had he slept? 

Nope. Couldn’t remember that, either. 

Shower? Change clothes? Step outside of his workroom? 

If he’d done it, it hadn’t sunk into his memory at all. 

People talked to him. He thought they did, at least. But he hadn’t paid any attention to them. They weren’t there for him to talk to. They were there to get him what he needed, from fresh paints to ideas. 

At least he sort of thought his ideas came from them. Whenever someone else came into the room – not that it happened often – a single glance filled his mind with untold images. Sometimes he could recognize people that he knew, or had known. Sometimes he saw other things, other places, people that he’d never met, fantasies that could never be. 

Seeing himself envisioned being married to someone else hadn’t been one of his better experiences. It wasn’t her. She wasn’t there. 

What had he done to whoever thought that? He didn’t remember that, either. 

He wasn’t certain if he cared, either. No one had any right to daydream _that_ about him. 

People weren’t there to make up fantasies about him. They were there to give him everything that he needed. To bring him the tools to work with. To _be_ the tools that he worked with. 

His eye flickered around the room. Paint. He needed more paint. And canvases. He’d almost run out. There were only two or three left, and ideas for what to use them for already glittered in his mind. 

Maybe not in his mind. He wasn’t sure what was his mind and what was other people’s minds or what was… 

What was… 

He brushed one hand by his face. It left a streak of dark red paint there. What had he been painting? 

The future. The future that would lead him to Cyndia again. That was all that mattered. He told himself that over and over again. 

He drew in a breath. It wasn’t very steady. Neither were his legs. He didn’t try to get up. If he tried, he would end up on the floor. He would try another day, when he wasn’t… when it wasn’t… 

He didn’t know anymore. 

He’d almost forgotten what he did know. What mattered, what lived in the forefront of his mind and insisted on every scrap of his mental processing power, were images that he couldn’t have described had his life depended on it, but which hung there regardless. 

Monsters. Warriors. Demons. Magicians. Their names, their histories, their abilities, how to make them all work together. It all glowed in his mind and no matter what he tried, he couldn’t stop thinking about them. 

Though in all fairness, he didn’t try very often. When he found himself a few moments to breathe, another thought sparked instead: these creations would guide him to wherever _she_ was. To where Cyndia was. 

He wanted to draw her. To bring back every moment of those wonderful times together into one last memory. But the moment his fingers turned toward his canvas and paints, the Eye in his head pulsed and another image, another thought for how to put all of this together burst into his head. 

_Traps. I should make traps._ He could feel how the traps fit into everything else, the rules that would surround and support them. Some of them tied into the works he’d already crafted. Some would lay the foundation for what was going to come in the future. 

He flexed his fingers. They ached from overuse, drips and drops of paint throwing a dulled dried rainbow over his skin. Perhaps he needed to take a rest. 

But not much of one. The Eye pulsed. He couldn’t rest for very long; the energy of creation could only be held back for a limited time. If he didn’t give it an out, then he would be … 

What? That came under the list of things that he didn’t know. But it wouldn’t be _right_. He would be blocked, kept hemmed in by forces and thoughts he couldn’t control. 

He drew another breath. It wasn’t much steadier than the one had before. He closed his eyes – his eye – and tried to think a little. He wasn’t very good at it. 

He would have to go somewhere soon. The time he’d spent in Egypt remained blurred and confused. Only a few images stood out: the one who had set the Eye in him chief among them. Little flickers sparked; he’d created paintings of most of what he’d seen, and taken more notes than he remembeed writing. 

On his desk in the room people insisted on calling his office – he preferred to think of his workroom as his office, that was where he kept his canvas, his paints, his ideas, his thoughts, his heart – he had a growing stack of paper with notes. What to call these things. What the rules were – easy and simple to start with, but with room for improvement. 

He could look at those rules and feel what the future would bring. The lore that whispered under his skin and pulsed in his heart and sang in his mind, calling to him. 

What he’d brought back from Egypt was only the beginning. He would make trips to other places. He could feel other places calling to him, other monsters and spells and traps that insisted on his attention. 

Had they been there all along and he just hadn’t noticed before? Been too wrapped up in his own needs and wants and desires to properly pay attention to what happened? 

They’d been there. He could feel it. He _knew_ it. And those other places called from all over the world. He didn’t know where to go first, but he would go when he could. He couldn’t hold himself back on that. 

He didn’t want to, either. The Eye offered a simple bargain. He wanted to see Cyndia again, to be with her no matter what. To have even the slightest chance of that, he needed to make this… whatever it was… live. It needed to engulf the world. 

Again Pegasus rubbed his face and struggled to catch his breath. There was still another canvas and he wasn’t out of paint yet. 

Out of breath, his throat dry, his stomach an aching cavern, his fingers aching and paint-stained, but he had canvas and he had paint. What else did he need to get what he wanted? 

For a few moments he let his head rest against the wall, trying to think of what he needed to do next. What would fill that canvas? What would he bring to life? 

No… just create. Just recreate. Forge the first steps between this world and another. Someone else would take it the rest of the way. That wasn’t part of his job. He was there only to carve the beginnings. 

Whispers of ideas darted through his weary thoughts. He hadn’t picked anything yet that would be clear enough to start and the more he pushed himself, the more ordinary, mundane thoughts wanted to push themselves in. He needed to eat. He should probably take a nap. 

He knew all of those things. He didn’t even try to do any of them. They could all come later. He wasn’t going to die. 

No, he wouldn’t, the Eye whispered, a soft dance of laughter under words that no one else could hear. He’d barely begun to serve his purpose. He would not be _allowed_ to die until that happened. 

Somehow, the idea of dying after that didn’t bother him at all. If he couldn’t see her again in life, then he would be able to in death. So no matter what happened, they would be together again one day. 

Was someone talking to him? He grumbled something that would probably fit – he would eat later, he wasn’t tired, everything was fine – and turned toward that last canvas. He thought he knew what he wanted to put there. Did he have enough black for it? His fingers and arms itched to get to work and he started for the paints. 

Where were the paints? They should have been there and he saw nothing at all. All he could see were the empty ones and he _knew_ he’d had more. 

A firm hand rested on his shoulder. He stared up, blinking bleary eyes, trying to wrap his thoughts around what he saw there. Who he saw there, really. 

“Young master,” Crocketts said, voice not allowing a single breath of resistance. “You need to go to sleep. And eat. You can’t get anything else done today.” 

Pegasus would protest that. He wanted to, if he found himself capable of making words. He tried to turn back to the canvas, only to find that the paintbrush in his hand wasn’t there anymore, and Crocketts turned him in the direction of the door. 

How long had it been since he’d stepped out of here? How long had it even been since he’d returned from Egypt, still with traces of blood and tears on his face, and visions in his mind that only artwork could settle in any proper way. 

“I’m not done yet,” he murmured, even as he took a few stumbling, unwilling steps. If he didn’t have paint here, he would have to go out and get some. Telling someone else to do it wouldn’t work; he needed to make certain that he had the right colors. And he could use more paintbrushes and canvases. He’d used almost everything that he had in stock. 

Crocketts just kept urging him onward, leading him out of the workroom and down the hallway. 

“I know you’re not, sir. But you can’t work if you don’t rest.” 

That probably made sense. It didn’t stop him from wanting to turn back right away. Images shimmered in his mind still. Thoughts on the first level of the rules and on ways that he could develop them further also whispered around. It wouldn’t be difficult to start with. If he just sat down and started to revise the messy notes he’d already made, just clearing up a few points… 

Crocketts pushed him right down into his bedroom and over toward the bed. Pegasus stumbled, catching himself on the side of the soft mattress. One of the _many_ reasons he hadn’t really tried to much other than paint was how difficult he found it to walk these days. 

He couldn’t remember how many times he’d fallen in Egypt. He didn’t know if it was because he remembered so little of those days or because he couldn’t count that high. But even as he adjusted to the loss of an eye and the gaining of an Eye, he hadn’t yet managed to wrap himself around the loss of depth or balance. 

He knew that losing his eye should have affected how he painted. It was one of the many things Pegasus didn’t bother to think about. It hadn’t. He was glad of that. 

Now he pulled himself onto the bed, more interested in sleeping so he could shop later than anything else. He paused only long enough to kick his shoes off, and didn’t even bother to bring his legs all the way onto the bed. 

Somewhere in the depths of his dreaming, he thought he felt hands on his head, resting there, combing through his hair, and a soft, far too familiar voice that he wanted to hear and yet didn’t, because it would be a dream and nothing more, murmured words that he couldn’t have remembered, let alone understood. 

But when he woke, nearly sixteen hours later, a far too familiar perfume hung in the air, and Pegasus all but fled the room to get what he needed to start his work again. Canvas, paint, and time were what he needed. 

Nothing but a dream, though a painfully sweet one. He couldn’t forget. He had to stay focused. 

He had to create. 

* * *

**The End**

**Notes:** I wrote this a while ago and just never got around to posting it. But here it is!


End file.
